filed under Environment | Science
Antarctica is melting! melting!
11:27AM ON
03/26/2008
BY
Ari Savitzky
Oh, what a world. MSNBC notes:
A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth’s southernmost continent.
Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.
Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.
As the democrats spend their time bashing each others’ brains in, and McCain slowly loses his, the planet is literally falling apart. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the actual consequences of events like this, but it seems like two results are obvious. 1) A short term drop in the price of a bag of ice at your local convenience store, and 2) rising sea levels.
One is a joke, the other is a harbinger of global economic and human disaster. Guess ‘em!
The joke was the bags of ice. Ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Mr. Burns loses his childhood teddy bear?
Upon arrival in Paris, Lindbergh tosses the bear out the window, where it is caught by a young Adolf Hitler. In 1945, in his Führerbunker in Berlin, Germany, Hitler blames Bobo for losing (and possibly causing) World War II and tosses him away. In the next scene, Bobo lies onboard the submarine Nautilus headed for the North Pole. He becomes encased in a block of ice until picked up by an ice-gathering expedition. The bag of ice with him in it is sent to Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart in Springfield. Bart Simpson buys the bag of ice, finds Bobo and, after remarking “It’s a teddy bear! Ugh gross, its probably diseased or something!” gives it to Maggie to play with.
And yes, I know that Antarctica is the south pole.
Bottom line: not to be a doomsayer, but the impending doom is real. Read the NYT’s new piece on “what are green jobs?” and then call your congressman.
March 26th, 2008 at 1:48PM
Jef Nickerson Says:
Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf — about 6,180 square miles (about the size of Northern Ireland)— was at risk of collapsing.
Hey, no fair, I thought they were supposed to compare these suckers to the size of Rhode Island. Four times the size of Rhode Island is scary. Boo!
Of course, Rhode Island will be a lot smaller at the rate that the poles are melting.
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